Optical control of cell signaling by single-chain photoswitchable kinases

Shining a light on cell signaling Protein kinases are proteins that are used to transmit signals within cells. Zhou et al. engineered diverse kinases so that they could be switched on and off with visible light. They modified the fluorescent protein Dronpa so that instead of being tetrameric, it dimerized in violet light and dissociated in cyan light, and they fused two copies to representatives from different families of kinases. The engineered kinases could be photo-switched with spatial and temporal precision and were successfully used to study a variety of signaling pathways. Science , this issue p. 836